Bookkeeping services and software for small business

In the modern world, small business owners have turned out to be an extremely busy person in every aspect. They are solely responsible for so many tasks at a time that they hardly find a suitable time to manage the bookkeeping services and softwarefor their very own small business.

For those who don’t know yet what does bookkeeping means, it refers to the action or work of maintaining accounts of the fiscal activities of a business. Now the question may arise in my reader’s mind, “what does an accountant do?” An accountant or a bookkeeper can save your time, energy and most importantly money in many ways. I know for only the last reason most of the people will jump into the decision of hiring or say keeping an in-house or virtual accountant. But managing such personnel is not quite a matter of ease since bookkeeping service has its own prices.

However, following are some key reason for which, I think a small business owner should outsource the task of bookkeeping from their own plate to a pro-

Time-saving: On an average bookkeeping task involved 250.6 hours of work a year and many of the entrepreneurs have to spend at least 6 hours a week for paperwork relevant to bookkeeping which can be allocated towards professional hands.

Increasing profit margin: Research shows that if the bookkeeping task is managed by professionals other than the business owner himself, the profit margin is said to be increased by at least 10%.

Growth in Cash management: Once the pecuniary tasks are dealt by ace’s, there is seen approx. $45,000 a year in terms of saving expenses. Besides daily, weekly, monthly reports are available on hand.

Progress in Collections: More or less 30% collection rates are improved through better-quality invoicing, upgraded documentation system, and collection calls when a professional personnel oversee the task of bookkeeping.

At this moment, I shall make it clear whether any major differences prevail in between bookkeeping and accounting. When it comes to bookkeeping vs accounting, to inexperienced eyes they both may appear same but technically speaking they are not truly homogeneous. A bookkeeper record, classify and analyze the financial data whereas an Accountant ensures the accuracy of the accounting reports and many a time act as advisor of the bookkeeper.

When it comes to the point of bookkeeping, accounting and tax services for small business; the business owner need to appraise the service from several angles likewise-

Price or Cost involved: Greatest headache for all the Small Business owners is that what will be the charges for affording a pro bookkeeping services. Earlier, many of the bookkeeping services provider companies were not crystal clear about their pricing or charged very high rates. But nowadays, bookkeeping fees for small business has come to a stable stage due to excessive competition evident in the market.

Better timesaving opportunity: What is the use of bookkeeping services if it can’t save your time as much as you want? Small Business people prefer to have control over their data regarding monetary transactions and events.

The inclusion of basic bookkeeping services: This comprises things like disbursing bills, revenue and expenditure classification, and reconciling bank and credit card statements.

The enclosure of payroll and tax return services: Not every businessman has the same need for accounting and bookkeeping services prevalent in an open market. Some might feel the necessity of payroll and tax return services included in the job description of accounting services provided by the supplier of such services.

Use of accounting software: Entrepreneur must know which of the bookkeeping software is being used by the bookkeeper among Freshbooks, GoDaddy Bookkeeping, Intuit Quickbooks, Kashoo, OneUp, Xero, Zoho books or Wave.

Mobile versions and apps available: Some small business owner chooses to continuously play with the numbers and for them, having an app or smartphone/tablet compatible version of the accounting software is a must. Freshbooks provide the most suitable smartphone/tablet version if you are getting confused which one of the earlier mentioned might do your job.

Incorporation with Third-party apps: The forthcoming of accounting lies in two precise areas: the cloud, and integration. And by incorporation I meant integration. The impending finance manager will either approach the cloud-based financial management applications, like NetSuite or they will proceed towards the hundreds of auxiliary solutions that can link to services like QuickBooks Online and Xero.

Resourceful customer service team– Alike any other service-based industry, accounting services for small businesses. Here a small business owner must know, “who is the team behind the company, and how accessible are they for customers?”

Grounded on the demand of the users and considering the trends to selecting the cheapest one existing in a market, simple bookkeeping for small business work categorize accounting or online bookkeeping services into three class-

Free to Use service- This includes involvement of basic bookkeeping spreadsheet. Most of the noted Accounting software or online accounting service provider authorize a 30 days trial version which is completely free to use. But that limits some facilities. So who is looking for almost all relevant remote bookkeeping services without spending a dime, free bookkeeping software like Wave is the ultimate solution for them.

Standard service- It involves almost all types of accounting & business relevant services likewise double-entry bookkeeping system, all major A/C Payables and A/C Receivables, Payroll, time tracking system, live support, inventory tracking and multi-currency sponsor etc. and pricing of this sort of tools is also very reasonable in comparison with the service offered. Intuit QuickBooks is the most common example of this kind of support.

Premium service- Services which are not commonly sought and given upon fulfillment of some exclusive conditions can be referred to Premium Services. Professional accounting services like Estimation of Quarterly/Per Annum Tax, Regular Financial Statement Generation or any related business services similar to efficient documentation procedure, providing Customer/Vendor portal etc. are said to be premium services. Software like Xero can be an example of a premium service provider.

Now that we know what to look for when bookkeeping for the small business task is delegated, this is high time we should also find out the bookkeeping services price list as well. In case of dividing small business accounting services cost, I am mentioning here as much accurate information based on the available info on the net and you may take a look at this to have a clear concept about the costing regarding the most widely used Accounting software:

Name of the Software

Price starts at

AccountEdge

$499.00 upfront

Blackbaud

$119.00 per month

Freshbooks

$10.00 per month

Intuit Quickbooks

$10.00 per month

Microsoft Dynamics

$40.00 per month

Kashoo

$16.65 per month

FreeAgent

$9.00 per month

Sage one

$25.00 per month

Wave

Absolutely Free

Xero

$20.00 per month

Since there is some accounting software accessible around the world, it’s near to impossible to describe them all in a single piece of write up. So I would rather pick up 5 Accounting Software from my list of favorites which can put remote bookkeeping services in order.

Quickbooks: Do you want to stay on top of your business practice with a dashboard that puts you in control? Quickbooks offers you the opportunity to directly oversee what needs your consideration with alerts, to-dos and latest events for each client together with one-click access to their books and payroll. Quickbook Online by design synchronizes your comprehensive business finance profile to a solo dashboard where several users can outlook in-depth reports and accounts of your company. Subsequently, it creates trade, profit and loss sheets as well as billing and invoice solutions that are all mobile friendly and print compatible. In addition, QuickBooks Online has more or less 40 types of reports comprising Profit-Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement, which covers costing abilities, inventory management and assimilates with QuickBooks Online Payroll and Intuit GoPayment. However, point to be noted that this software lacks full support. As an alternative, you may need to tap a third-party QuickBooks-certified accountant in lieu of a fee to completely optimize the solution.

Xero: Xero is very much similar to QuickBooks Online in terms of interface and feels but with more features. The best thing about Xero is the Mac integration. Dissimilar to other solutions that only feature a plugin, Xero has a Mac module that natively links to the Mac UI. Other key features are integrated payroll module, bank reconciliation, balance sheet etc. You can see your cash flow in real-time with online accounting, billing, invoicing & banking.

Freshbooks: Freshbooks can be considered a category leader idyllic for freelancers and small business owners who really like affordable bookkeeping. It is very much well-proportioned in terms of key features, reasonable pricing, and customer support. It furthermore ensures the most approachable mobile app with a fresh interface accessible to Android, iPhone, and mobile web users.

Sage One: Sage is considered one of the best for remote bookkeeping services. They invigorate the success of businesses. It delivers small and medium-sized organizations with a range of easy-to-use business administration software and services.

Wave: Wave is recognized as the world’s fastest growing software for self-employed bookkeeping, invoicing and more. Waveis also a complete freemium for basic accounting operation and so on. It covers most of the list of accounting duties.

Every single of the aforementioned software has both some pros and cons. While comparing among these, the key features offered, compatibility, integration and most importantly security system acquired are taken into account.

So, now if you are thinking of starting a bookkeeping business, manage your accounting outsourcing work and check a bookkeeper’s job description very well, who knows one day which one may come in handy.

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About The Author

Anishur Rahman.
"A professional Chartered Accountant From ICAEW.He is a business and Financial analyst.He likes to blogging on business issue and help the entrepreneur of small and medium business people who are eager to start their business very soon or they already started "